The Latest Essays


A Means to an End

February 1, 2012


I am nature's means of appreciating itself. That is the conclusion I have come to after a careful consideration of the question "what and why am I?".

If the object of existence is joy, and it's either that or nothing, then what is chiefly needed is a mechanism for experiencing joy. That would be consciousness. As such, consciousness has to be there right from the beginning (if any) as an intrinsic characteristic of existence. Furthermore, the evolution of the universe has to be ultimately directed towards organizing consciousness to maximize its capacity for experiencing joy. I, Paul Wyszkowski, am just one such lump of organized consciousness by means of which the universe may enjoy itself.

Now, it has not escaped my attention that the universe is not enjoying itself maximally everywhere and everywhen. There are, evidently, puddles (and sometimes oceans) of pain, misery and desperation scattered throughout conscious experience. And where joy is actually being experienced its quality is variable and transitory.

This is where we must pay the devil its due. Logic tells us that evil, defined as whatever is destructive or obstructive to the maximal experience of joy, is inevitable and as much part of existence as is consciousness. Existence is a process, that is, a succession of changes. The thing about change is that it is always at least to some extent unpredictable - unpredictability is the essence of genuine change. Because of this there can be no guarantee that change will be constructive to the experiencing of joy. Hence the inevitability of evil.

However, there is a saving grace and its name is probability. Probability, the degree to which change can be predicted, can be seen as a consequence of intentionality inherent in the universe. Experience shows that probabiities of future events can indeed be influenced by conscious intent. However, probability cannot be controlled absolutely - where there is change there is necessarily uncertainty. Probability can only be influenced statistically over a large number of events. This is sufficient to make possible molding the future intentionally to enhance the universal experience of joy.

More highly organized consciousness can be potentially more effective at influencing how the universe unfolds. However, to be effective consciousness must be focused on the object of its desire and pay close attention to what choices may be optimal under given circumstances. We cannot, in any case, completely avoid evil. We can only minimize it. (On the other hand, inattention can greatly magnify evil's destructive effects).

So, bottom line, it seems that my job, my raison d'être as an instance of organized consciousness, is this: to assist in maximizing the universe's self-appreciation and self-enjoyment. With that understanding I can commit to this project wholeheartedly, keeping in mind that it is not a zero sum game and cannot be achieved by exterminating evil (that, fortunately, is impossible) but by making creative use of it. Evidently, we absolutely need an adversary to keep us surprised, challenged, changing and evolving. Our wellbeing and our ability to enjoy the world (in both the transitive and intransitive sense) depend on it.


Paul Wyszkowski


The Romantic Universe

January 5, 2012


 The five conventional points of view long established in the theatre (and in literature in general) are the tragic, the comic, the romantic, the "realistic" and the "naturalistic". Although plays and novels typically use some blend of these they are customarily classified according to the dominant one. 

In a tragedy, a character's personal desire is rigidly set as the absolute with which the world must be compelled to comply. The inevitable and irreversible result is that the world as it actually is prevails and  the protagonist is destroyed in the process. 

In a comedy there is a learning process - the clash of desire and reality is not fatal but rather transforming, leading to a satisfactory resolution. 

In a romance the assumption is that our intentionality can change the world, at least to some degree, and that the future can be molded closer to the heart's true desire (which in a romance is usually assumed to be intrinsically trustworthy).

In a "realistic" play the world is assumed to be indifferent to the protagonists' desires - achieving their objectives is to a large extent a matter of pure chance.

In a "naturalistic" play the world is assumed to be actually hostile to the protagonist - it's war. The protagonist must battle the world to achieve desired objectives, or just to stay alive. 

These are all particular points of view and each captures some aspect of the truth of the human condition. But I believe the most realistic of them is the romantic point of view.

Both the "realistic" and the "naturalistic" conventions set up an artificial duality between the protagonist and the rest of the world which I consider to be unreal. After all, the protagonist absolutely belongs to the world as an inseparable part of it subject to the same laws of nature as the whole. The conflict is not between the protagonist and the rest of the world but between different perceptions and interpretations of the world. Tragedy depends on the luciferian premise of absolute pride which is intrinsically unrealistic and doomed to fail. Comedy is somewhat more realistic in that it allows for change and evolution but its optimism is often unwarranted. It is romance that offers room for genuine hope even though without guarantees which, I believe, most accurately reflects the nature of the world as it is. 


Paul Wyszkowski

The Problem with God

December 15, 2011

"That which people call 'God' is not God" (opening line from Lao Tse's "Tao Te Ching", my paraphrase). The number of people who understand this is vanishingly small. Whether we profess to believe or disbelieve in God (or a God) most of us don't actually know what we are talking about. And to the extent that we believe that we do, we are a danger to ourselves and to the human society in general.

For better and for worse, words are sufficiently fuzzy and slippery to ensure that what we say we believe (or disbelieve) is not an accurate representation of what we actually do believe at the level of feelings where what we believe matters. When we are being true to ourselves (which is admittedly seldom) we act not in conformity with our words which, in any case, we only think we understand, but with our feelings which we know absolutely. Of course, our feelings are often in conflict with one another but that's another story. (By the way, one fundamental object of prayer is to discover what it is we truly feel and desire).

The ideas of God (and there are a great many of them out there) are, essentially, metaphors for what we feel to be true. However, words cannot convey fully or accurately what we feel and what we feel is only a partial perception of reality from a particular point of view. As Lao Tse wisely observed, what we say we mean by "God" is not what we actually mean by "God" and what we actually mean by "God" is not God. Which is not to say that it is not some kind of an inkling of God, one that may well suffice for our circumstances. Indeed, we neither can nor should nor need to understand God completely which would require becoming God ourselves (something that may or may not be our final destiny). For the record, my own idea of God is not as the object but as the origin of our truest desire, leaving plenty of room for a debate about what that is.

Not believing in God is exactly equivalent to believing in God. It's a matter of defining "God" (what is it that you believe or not believe in?) and all definitions of God are necessarily false if only because they are necessarily incomplete. The best we can do is to associate God with being itself (thus reducing the argument against the "existence of God" to an argumant against existence itself which is absurd coming from an existing being). What matters is whether we believe that being is good (i.e., has value and meaning) or not (i.e., has no value and no meaning). This matters because it influences directly our capacity for enjoyment of life, individually and as a society. Generally, we'd rather enjoy life than not and that's why we are virtually all of us believers (including most of those who label themselves "atheists").

The lamest argument against existence of God is that God is merely a product of wishful thinking. Actually, our wishful thinking, our desires, including the primary desire to enjoy our being (however distorted by ignorance and irrational beliefs) are probably the clearest manifestation of divine presence.


Paul Wyszkowski

Junior High Stuff: Homer Today

November 5, 2011


Among the cognoscenti Homer is considered the greatest poet ever. As I see it, his greatness lies in his brilliantly accurate observation and compelling rendition of characters in action, not in his philosophical insights. He is a reliable and vivid reporter rather than an interpreter of or a commentator on the facts of life.

As for the facts, the Illiad concerns itself with a single theme, the personal quarrel between two tribal warrior-kings, Achilles and Agamemnon, which threatens to doom the Greeks' prospects for victory in their ten year old war with Troy. Their quarrel is, as a reviewer of a recent translation of the Illiad put it, "junior high stuff". (Actually, he said it isn't but it is, it is).

Achilles and Agamemnon are jocks who are also spoiled brats. They inhabit a culture which worships jocks and encourages, even insists on their self-aggrandizement. Athletic ability and physical bravery are the highest values (besides tribal loyalty) and are maximally rewarded. Thus a celebrity jock's personal possessions, his loot, including female slaves (especially female slaves - great sex was a very important part of the reward) represent the measure of his standing and success as a celebrity jock. Our heroes' famous and furious quarrel (which shakes up heaven and litters earth with corpses) is, in fact, over a captive Trojan girl they both claim as their just reward.

You may be noticing parallels here with our own mass culture which is not essentially different from that of the ancient Greeks. Hence the continuing relevance of Homer (ironically largely unappreciated by those whom it most concerns because of lack - or perhaps impossibility - of a good vernacular translation).

What is different today is that, first of all, we number several billion vs. several million in Homer's time; we have developed several socially revolutionary technologies (chemical, biological, nuclear, and digital); and, most significant of all, we have among us individuals whose depth of understanding of the world in general and humanity in particular exceeds that of any preceeding thinkers and philosophers. That is not to say we have all - or any - answers to the fundamental existential questions. However, some few of us have a better grasp of what these questions might be and how various proposed answers might play out in real life.

In other words, we are better equipped, technologically, intellectually, and - dare I say? - spiritually to enjoy our lives if that's what we want. Unfortunately, most of us are not even as clear as a typical ancient Greek in our self-understanding. We have, in general, failed to use our considerable present advantages to improve the quality of our lives to a level significantly higher than those of Homer's contemporaries whose lives (like most of ours) were indeed junior high stuff, gods not excepted.


Paul Wyszkowski


Schrödinger's Cat Saved

October 13, 2011


Everybody has heard about Schrödinger's cat. You haven't? OK, everybody else please be patient while I retell the tale for your benefit. Schrödinger was a physicist with a macabre turn of mind. To illustrate how silly quantum mechanics really is he proposed the following experiment: put a cat in a black box you can't see inside. Together with the cat, put in a can of poisonous gas equipped with a mechanism which will release the gas if it gets a signal from a radiation detector which is pointed at a low intensity radioactive source.

Now the thing about radioactivity is that it is an absolutely random process. The source (which could be a speck of radioactive uranium, for example) will emit particles of radiation now and then at unpredictable intervals. The next emission might be a second from now or a week from now. There is absolutely no way to tell. (For a higher intensity source the average interval will be shorter but still unpredictable). So once the cat is in the box there's no way to figure out whether it is already dead or still alive other than actually looking in the box.

What did Schrödinger have against cats? I don't know but his proposed experiment certainly gained him a lot of notoriety. As I said, everybody's heard about Schrödinger's cat. Except you.

Actually, this is not at all about the cat (in an even deeper sense, as I will show, than Schrödinger knew). What Schrödinger tried to illustrate with his grisly experiment is a problem with quantum mechanics which asserts (rightly enough) that an unpredictable event remains unpredictable until it is observed. That seems perfectly commonsensical but Schrödinger asked, well, what about the cat? Once we open the box we can observe that it is either dead or alive. But until we do that, what is the status of the cat inside te box? Whether it dies or lives is absolutely unpredictable so, according to quantum mechanics, until actually observed the cat must be both dead and alive or, rather, neither.

You have no idea the amount of furious scientific and philosohical debate Schrödinger's question precipitated. It went on for decades and is still being debated (Schrödinger first asked it way back in early 20th century). It all hinges on one highly conceited (and unwarranted) assumption that all scientists and philosophers insist on making, apparently without exception. The universal assumption is that an "observation" requires a human observer, or, to be exact, human consciousness.

Actually, as some bright readers might have already figured out, in Schrödinger's contraption the observer of first instance is the radiation detector. The detector "knows" at all times whether a particle of radiation has been emitted or not. The rest of the paraphernalia, the poison releasing mechanism, the cat and the box are all irrelevant. The detector may not know whether the cat is alive or dead but it knows whether a signal went out to the poison releasing mechanism or not. It does not matter that the observer is not human - it knows what it observes because it has been designed to know and to act on this knowledge.  

So there is no reason to assume that the cat is at any time at once neither dead nor alive. Quantum mechanics does not require that. The quantum mechanical aspects of this experiment end with the observation by the radiation detector. Everything after that is, for practical purposes, perfectly determinate. No need to risk killing the cat, even hypothetically. 


Paul Wyszkowski
 


Uncertainty, Change,Time and the Heart's Desire

September 10, 2011


Here is my thesis: without uncertainty there can be no change and therefore no time. In this essay I show its logical necessity and surprising consequences. It turns out uncertainty is not only a necessary condition of existence but also of a life worth living.

Let us assume the opposite of my thesis is true, that is, that there is absolutely nothing uncertain about the universe and all it entails. That means all of it must be completely known and determined because our postulate states that there neither is nor can be anything about the universe that is unknown and therefore uncertain. Such a universe without any uncertainty is necessarily a static universe, forever fixed in its form and properties. It cannot change - there is no way for it to change. It is what it is, a single eternal instant, if indeed it can be said to exist at all. (A changeless universe is unobservable because there are no events to be observed - nothing is happening - so there is no evidence of its existence.)

I conclude from the above that for a universe to exist, change and evolve, some aspects of it must necessarily remain unknown and therefore uncertain.

Our actual experience of the universe suggests that there is no one specific property of the universe that is intrinsically unknowable. However, when we try to determine exactly some particular property we find we cannot simultaneously determine some other complementary property (vis. the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle). This makes sense. It would be strange if some particular properties of the universe were arbitrarily singled out for unknowability. This way there is a democracy of unknowability with degrees of unknowability symmetrically balanced among the various properties of the universe (the more we know about one the less we can know about the other). Thus the universe can change and evolve without any particular aspect of it being absolutely unknowable even though as a whole it remains, as it must, indeterminate.

Of course, only in a changing, evolving universe time (and, for that matter, space) can have a meaning. Time is a sequence of observed events, that is, changes in state of the universe. So is space. We measure out space by the number of events between here and there just as we measure out time by the number of events between now and then. It's just a matter of direction with the one distinction that the direction of time seems irreversible. There is a good reason for that: the uncertainty which makes change possible is resolved once a change has ocurred. It  becomes a certain fact and cannot be made uncertain again.

Actually, movement in space is also irreversible but because of apparent lack of change in seemingly stable spacial environment we fail to notice this irreversibility. In fact, we can never return to the place we started from. But that's another story.

The inherent and necessary uncertainty of the future of an evolving universe has one consequence of colossal significance to us humans: it allows for the possibility of consciously shaping the yet unformed future closer to our heart's desire. Without that life would be pointless.


Paul Wyszkowski
 




A Significant Life

September 2, 2011



Significant in what way and to whom?

This question points to the conditional nature of significance as a quality of a life. It is not necessarily a positive one. For better or worse, wealth, power and fame confer a great deal of significance upon a life. On the other hand, even for those leading a life of solitude their self-regard can be the bene- or maleficiary of their perception of life's significance.

Is maximum public significance, as some believe, something to strive for as the main objective of our lives? Given the relativity of the value of significance (which can be positive or negative, it being a matter of opinion which) I cannot see it as the fundamental measure of the value of a life. Rather I see it as an important but largely incidental and circumstantial byproduct of a life. (I believe that the fundamental objective of life - and being in general - is joy rather than significance but that's another story).

Thus I find that my own publicly insignificant life is not without value. Actually, I deeply appreciate my life. It is highly significant to me. I sometimes wish it were more generally significant to the benefit of some of the many less fortunate who might possibly learn from my example. But then there are innumerable highly significant lives out there, both historical and contemporary, from which many (including me) have drawn and continue to draw inspiration and which offer far better examples than mine. 

However, in concluding from this (essentially correctly) that I therefore need not concern myself with public significance or insignificance of my life I should not disregard the need to pay attention to the occasional opportunities for my life to become more significant to others (in a good way). Such opportunities do arise from time to time and to deliberately ignore them would be life denying. 

Then there are all those sociable high energy individuals for whom actively seeking out such opportunities constitutes the very meaning of their lives. Their definitions of "a good way" vary but, in any case, significance is generally a secondary consideration.


Paul Wyszkowski


(09/02/11) TABS writes:

September is the perfect occasion to set sail on a sea of thought concerning significance. The launch of another school year and the first red leaves below the maple tree bring Pogo’s whither and wherefore to mind.

I think your choice for joy has a lot of merit. Looking for significance in everything makes me debate the dance of what this being called me brings to the party and what tune the fates as piper play. Whether foxtrot, tango or waltz it sometimes has the sense of truly reeling. That’s the Omar Khayam effect.

When young I did eagerly frequent doctor and saint
And heard great argument about it and about
But evermore came out by the same door
As in I went.

There is a warning note in that but when touched by art or argument the transformation, if only the softening of a judgment, feels true.

We often go to the pool of your photo reflections to dream or laugh or sigh and smile. The scent of your significance lies there.

________________________________


Archived Essays

Contents (click title to retrieve, close file to return to this page):

     1.Art: What's Truth, Beauty and Goodness Got to Do with It? (May 20, 2002)
     2. Art as Language  (August 12,2003)
     3.How to Deal with Art (October 24, 2004)
     4.Where Order Meets Chaos (September 2, 2005)
     5.And the Winner is...  (February 14,2006)
     6.Photography and Art  (March 30, 2006)
     7.What Good Are Pictures That Don't Change?  (May 29, 2007)
     8.The Rationale for Religion  (July 22, 2011)
     9. If a Tree Fell in a Forest...  (August 4, 2011)